The Regular
by JadeLightning-Wolf
Summary: [AU Ficlet]They have never spoken a word to each other, but for the past six months they have met every week in a place where hope has been abandoned. Now perhaps it will be restored.


_A/N: A gift ficlet for Linay, one of the finest authoresses to ever grace the RK fandom. If you haven't heard of her I may have to slap you. Go read her fic "Broken Pieces" at once!_

_Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin is not nor will he ever be mine. If he was, suffice it to say that Seisouhen would have been very, very different. Observe as I grumble at evil OVA's.

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**The Regular**

_Snow will fall, my dear, it will gather on this hallowed ground, and without you here, I'm turning blue with the cold. Turning blue. Turning blue._

He was here again. The same man who had sat in the same shadowed corner of this particular bar every Thursday for the past six months. And she was here again. The same woman who had sat alone on the same stage of this particular bar every Thursday since she turned twenty-one. Their relationship was an odd one no doubt.

She had never spoken a word to him and he obliged her the same courtesy. Instead, they had an exchange of a different kind. He sat in his corner, quietly nursing a beer and being her audience. She in turn, sat under her lone spotlight and sang, not necessarily for him but rather simply to provide the kind of solace he sought.

The bar at which they maintained their strange and unspoken relationship was the kind of place where individuals sought to separate from every day life and simply exist without thinking, without doing, and without caring. The atmosphere was subdued and smoky, with flickering lights and low blues music on the speakers mourning anything and everything when a performer was not doing the same. People came here not to get boisterously drunk. They only desired to forget the world outside, at least for a short amount of time.

She could remember when she'd come in asking for a regular night for live gigs. The owner of the bar, as melancholy and drab as his establishment, had snorted in her face, wafting the scent of cigarettes and alcohol on his breath. "Why should I hire you, girly?" he'd demanded, already turning his back. "You're too damn young for this place."

"Just one song," she'd murmured, turning quietly agonized eyes on him. To this day, the owner couldn't say what made him agree to hear her. She had pulled out her love-worn guitar, quickly tuning by ear before picking up a soft jazz rift. The owner's ears perked, though he tried very hard to keep his face from showing interest. A few hushed choruses later, he'd snorted again and said, "You work Thursdays from 6 'til 11. Don't be late."

Some several months later, he'd come into the bar. He might've come regularly before then, but not on Thursdays, because she knew all their shadowed faces by then, their choices of drink, even their ages to some extent. He'd caught her eye the moment he entered. Though he was just as shadowed as the rest of the bar's patrons, parts of him gleamed out from the shadows as if to say, "Look! There is still life here! I'm not lost yet!"

Under the dim lights of the bar counter, she saw his startlingly long, red hair and sharp features, made even more severe by the uneven lighting. As he turned away with his drink he glanced at her while she sang on the stage and she nearly missed her next chord. There was the life she had detected in him, hidden away in his eyes. They nearly glowed from out of the shadows, harvest moonlight caught and trapped within a singular individual. She'd kept her eyes on him as he settled himself into the corner he now always occupied.

Through the entire performance the rest of the night she could not help but watch him and wonder what someone with what appeared to be some hope left could possibly doing here, where only the hopeless came. He in turn had watched her, his glinting eyes seeming to catch everything that surrounded him. For the first time in many, many years, she felt as if someone _saw_ her. He looked _at_ her and _saw _her. The feeling was so unfamiliar that she could only watch him in return the rest of the night, hardly even thinking about her song choices.

He returned the next Thursday. And then the next. And the one after that. And every time he came in, she knew. Quite suddenly she was no longer simply a soundtrack to misery. She was now an entertainer in the truest sense of the word, even though she had only one audience member.

In all honesty, he could not tell anyone why he returned Thursday after Thursday, regardless of his previous engagements. Something in her quiet and subdued manner as she pulled music from her instrument had seemed so…real.

She was by no means a diva. Her beauty, though striking, was not necessarily the sort that music moguls sought out. Her voice was well enough, but husky and deeper than record executives preferred in this day and age. And her songs, though showing some talent with both words and melodies, were not exceptional. Yet he remembered every one of them.

Perhaps it was the honesty of her voice and manner that drew him back for more. Never before had he seen someone expose themselves so much with every performance. Her music might not have been anything extraordinary, but the heartbreak and melancholy with which she sang carried across the room to every patron and allowed them to glimpse her suffering, even as she glimpsed their own. In a way, she stripped herself to her most essential elements on that stage, removing everything that was not and pulling forth all that was.

Regardless of his reasons, he returned every Thursday, watching her from the shadows. She'd nearly made him smile three months later when she'd added a new song to her repertoire. He still did not know if she'd written "Amber Stranger" about him, but he had his sneaking suspicions. She never managed to meet his eyes when she sang that one.

Tonight though, she watched him intently, her eyes almost searching. Her set was nearly finished now. Only one song left and she would be finished for the night. She was ending with one of his favorite songs of hers, "Snow will Fall." She struck up the melody slowly, fingers dancing over frets as she plucked notes from her mind and laid them forth for her audience to hear. Something was different about the song tonight. He ran the lyrics and phrases through his mind trying to pick out the difference. He realized with a start that she'd changed the main chorus just slightly.

"_Snow will fall, my dear, it will gather on this hallowed ground, but now that you're here…the cold doesn't seem so bad. It's not so cold now. Not so cold."_

She finished out the last rift on her guitar, a blue note ringing out in the quiet bar before she quietly thanked the crowed and left her stool. He watched her with quiet interest, slowly drinking the last of his beer as he readied to leave.

She took a deep breath as she approached the bar, softly ordering two beers. The owner raised an eyebrow at her over the counter and handed her the bottles. "Don't do anything stupid, girly," he growled at her before moving to clean a glass that had never really been dirty to begin with.

A glance to her side told her that her audience member was still there, contemplating the far wall with his starlit gaze. She approached slowly, making sure he noticed her before she reached the table. She need not have worried as his gaze swiveled to her almost immediately with her encroaching proximity.

"Can I…offer you another?" she murmured, holding up one beer loosely in her hand. Surprise was clear in his golden eyes as he slowly took the drink from her. She stood awkwardly for a moment next to his table until he remembered what the proper response was to such an offer.

"Have a seat please," he motioned, carefully keeping his face neutral.

She smiled slightly, just the barest upturning of the corners of her mouth. "Thank you."

"No, thank you. You're a good performer."

She blushed faintly and looked away. Each of them nursed their beer in the relative silence that followed, both trying to take surreptitious glances at the other to try to better understand them without words.

"I…" she murmured after a moment, "I'm Kaoru Kamiya." She extended her hand across the table, looking up at him hopefully. He gazed at her hand for a moment, wondering if this was an exceptionally good idea or an exceptionally stupid one. After a moment, he made his decision.

Quietly taking her hand, he shook it, noting calluses across the pads that might not have necessarily been from guitar strings. "Kaoru Kamiya," she said as he released her hand, "a pleasure to meet you. I'm Kenshin Himura."

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_Really, really quick A/N: So I know it's not a new "Shards of Me" chapter, but that one requires tweaking and time that I'm having trouble devoting. Worry not though. I'm working steadily and have promised the next chapter in less than a month._


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